Re: Native American land rights

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Much of the discussion on Indian rights has been abstract. That is not
good.  Not good at all. We are confronted by concrete struggles. Review the
position taken by Survival International below on land rights in Australia.
LM attacks Survival International and similar groups with a passion that I
find blood-curdling if not reactionary. Review Survival International's
statement and try to figure out what a correct "Marxist" position would be?
Defend the Australian government? Condemn Survival International like LM
does? Quoting Marx is not much help on these matters. Marxism requires a
heart as well as a brain and if we don't have the heart to confront these
issues squarely and take a stance in favor of social justice, we have no
possibility of changing the world in highly industrialized nations, let
alone the rainforests and back countries of the world.

Louis Proyect

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Australian government plans to legalise theft of Aboriginal land

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia have only
had their land rights recognised since 1992. In that year the High Court
finally overthrew the 200-year-old legal fiction of 'terra nullius' - that
Australia was an uninhabited land that belonged to no one when it was
colonised. The 1992 decision, known as Mabo, created for the first time in
Australia the concept of 'native title'.

A 1996 legal decision called 'Wik' clarified what native title meant. In
particular, it was clear that native title could still exist on land that
was covered by 'pastoral leases' - the huge sheep and cattle ranches which
cover much of outback Australia, where many Aborigines continue to live.

These two decisions, while still leaving Australia far behind many 'Third
World' countries in its recognition of indigenous rights, have been
fiercely opposed by the powerful farming and mining industries. As a
result, the Australian government is trying to undermine the Aborigines'
legal victories to such an extent as to render them almost meaningless.

The prime minister, John Howard, has proposed a new piece of legislation
called the Native Title Amendment Bill. Crucially, this will make native
title on pastoral leases worthless, and would leave many Aborigines unable
to claim native title in the first place. These measures would leave the
huge majority of Aborigines with no meaningful rights over their land.

In a report to the Australian parliament, the independent Australian Law
Reform Commission called the Howard proposals unconstitutional and racially
discriminatory. The government allegedly tried to suppress the report.

The Aboriginal representative Mick Dodson has said, 'If you take our land,
you take the ground of our culture. If you keep on taking there will be
nothing left.'